


The Privilege & Authority

by rei_c



Series: Threefold Path [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Adultery, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blasphemy, Blood and Gore, Canonical Character Death, Explicit Language, F/F, F/M, Literary References & Allusions, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Philosophy, Rape/Non-con Elements, Theology, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-23
Updated: 2015-01-23
Packaged: 2021-02-26 21:15:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21975466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rei_c/pseuds/rei_c
Summary: When the pregnancy test comes back positive, Mary decides she needs to get answers: about the yellow-eyed demon, about the deal she made, and, most of all, about the child growing inside her.
Relationships: Demons/Mary Winchester, John Winchester/Mary Winchester
Series: Threefold Path [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1581844
Comments: 4
Kudos: 14





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Once upon a time, I was reading William Blake by Kathleen Raine (Thames-Hudson, 1970) and stumbled upon this quote: "...a retelling of the Greater and Lesser Mysteries of Eleusis -- the descent of the Kore into Hades, and the nine mystic nights of the Mother's search for her child" (pg 38). Of course, all I could think about was Mary, travelling through hell.
> 
> Many of the descriptions of hell have been lifted directly from Dante's Inferno though I did take liberties with some aspects. Apologies to Dorothy Sayer for paraphrasing (badly) a section of her translation of and commentary on Inferno. Blake is, of course, peppered throughout, as well as two scripture references (Exodus 20:5 and 1 John 4:19) taken completely out of context.
> 
> The title comes from Romans 1:4-5: And Jesus Christ our Lord was shown to be the Son of God when God powerfully raised him from the dead by means of the Holy Spirit. Through Christ, God has given us the privilege and authority to tell Gentiles everywhere what God has done for them, so that they will believe and obey him, bringing glory to his name. (New Living Translation)
> 
> \--
> 
> Originally posted [here](https://rei-c.livejournal.com/1323868.html), with fully listed-out pairings, warnings, and dedications.

Mary stares at the stick, the little plus sign in blue. She stares and stares, as if looking at it might change the results, but they stay the same. A plus sign. She's pregnant.

She doesn't doubt the results; her body feels the same way it did right before she found out about Dean. Her tits are tender, sore when her nipples rub against her bras, and she can feel something settling around her hips, extra weight or water, maybe just the presence of a new life in her belly.

Looking at the plus sign, she feels the universe click into place and knows. How she knows, she isn't sure; maybe something she's gleaned from reading or from listening to her friends or from the random things Missouri has said, the times Mary's gone over to her house to replenish her stock of herbs and amulets away from John's innocent and unknowing eyes. Mary's always had just a touch of the shining. It's never helped her, never warned her. It's enough, just enough, to tell her when it's too late to change the problems that are coming.

Mary knows. The timing is too perfect to be coincidence: the yellow-eyed demon wants her baby. If she doesn't have one, though, then maybe -- but then again, if the demon is coming to see her baby and there's not an infant in the house, that might forfeit her side of the bargain. If she doesn't have a baby then John might drop dead, dead the way she saw him before, the way she still sees him sometimes in nightmares.

There's always abortion. There's always adoption, like maybe if she gives her baby up, the demon won't know. If she miscarries, what happens to the deal then?

Mary drops the stick in the garbage and looks at herself in the bathroom mirror. She tilts her head one way, then the other, then stands sideways and lifts up her shirt to study her stomach. It's still flat, mostly; she worked hard to lose the extra weight after Dean and it's been habit to keep up with her workouts over the years.

She presses a hand to her belly, closes her eyes. Her baby's too small to have ears, too small for anything except the vague beginning of fingers.

"Hey," Mary says. Her voice shakes. "Hey, baby."

Mary sinks down to the bathroom floor, curls up as tight as she can, and cries.

\--

She doesn't tell John, not right away, not before she's decided what to do. The thought of getting an abortion or trying to induce a miscarriage makes her chest ache; she's always supported a woman's right to choose but she can't do it. She can't do that and she can't bear the thought of giving her baby away. On her better days, she tries to tell herself that it's because she doesn't want to put another a family in danger, but on her worst days, on the days where all she wants to do is cry and eat peanut butter and marshmallow fluff sandwiches in bed, she's more honest with herself.

She can't convince herself that the demon wants anything else. It's after her child. And whatever this child means to the yellow-eyed demon, whatever havoc it's going to cause her family, her _life_ , she doesn't care. She still wants it. Even if she knew it was going to bring about the end of the world, be some kind of antichrist, she'd have trouble saying she didn't want it. It's her baby.

If she knew. 

Mary pauses at that, looks up from where she's pruning her rosebushes and tending the flower beds along the house. If she knew her baby was going to be -- if she knew her baby could be used by the yellow-eyed demon, for whatever reason, she'd try to get rid of it. It might kill her to do it, but she's strong and there could be other children.

If she knew for a _fact_ , it might change things just enough. If she knew beyond any doubt at all...

Mary clenches her hands around the cuttings in her hands, knuckles turning white with pressure. She'll find out. Once she does, she'll know if she needs to do something.

"Momma," Dean says from behind her. She drops the pruned stems, startled, and winces as a thorn cuts her palm, sends blood oozing over her skin. "Momma?"

"It's okay, Dean," she says, pulling up a smile from somewhere deep inside, licking off the blood and turning to wipe dirt off of Dean's cheek and nose. "Now, goodness, you're filthy. What on earth have you gotten into?"

Dean launches off into a story about the frogs in the back yard and how Billy next door told him through the fence that it would be a good idea to catch them all except they move too fast and like to hide in the mud-puddles, mouth going a mile a minute and only one word out of six making any sense.

Mary smiles and nods, clucks her tongue when she has to, and decides that she'll start that night. The sooner she knows, the better.

\--

Mary's never been the greatest student; it's perhaps the one thing her teachers and her father could agree on, if any of them remembered her or were still alive. Still, she's a hunter's daughter and a mother. She can handle the research.

Hunter lore says that there were six people who saw hell while still alive, though no two hunters can agree on the same six people. Some of the arguments are legendary; apparently that's why Daniel Elkins and Bobby Singer stopped talking to each other years ago. Still, everyone can agree on at least three people: William Blake, the Marquis de Sade, and Queen Jezebel.

In no hurry to start sacrificing children to Ashtoreth, or to fuck seven different men from seven different decades of life right in a row, Mary strikes Jezebel's methods off of her list. Blake petitioned God for the chance and it was only on God's sufferance that Blake spent any time in hell. Mary's not exactly religious and the lore says that Blake prayed for days and offered up a sacrifice of tears, hope, and the potential for children. She doesn't have the time, or the hope, and she's not willing to sacrifice her children, current _or_ future.

She's left with de Sade and she shudders at the thought. All she knows is that he summoned a demon sometime in the early 1770s, after he fled to Italy. Which demon is up for debate; some think it was Lust in its purest incarnation as one of the Seven Deadly Sins, and others believe it was a demon from the second circle of hell. Mary doesn't care. The ritual she's found should call up the right demon, regardless of which one it is.

\--

On the next night with a full moon, Mary stands in the middle of a summoning circle, a knife in one hand and a bowl of sulphur on the floor. Every inch of her skin crawls, yet she still pricks the point of her finger and lets blood drip onto the sulphur.

"I come hither to be instructed," she says, "and I will not go until I am informed. I summon de Sade's demon itself. I, Mary Winchester, once Mary Campbell, command answer."

It's not the most elaborate ritual, definitely isn't the most complicated invocation, but it still sends shivers down her spine. She stands there, waiting, as blood keeps falling, each drip smacking into the sulphur and spreading out. Mary can almost _feel_ the way it oozes, the sulphur drinking her blood down and using it as a basis for change, heating as it melds. There's an answering tug in her body and she shudders as flames lick the base of her spine.

Mary rests her free hand protectively over her belly. Her vision swims as she tries to look around; she's hot, so hot, and the sweat beading on her forehead and the back of her neck trickles slowly, each drop making her clit throb.

A laugh from behind and Mary whirls, forcing her knees to hold her upright as she brandishes the knife.

"A brave summoning," someone says. Mary squints but then the man comes out from the shadows and stands in front of her. He reeks of hell and his eyes -- god, his eyes are endless black.

"Who are you?" she asks.

The demon laughs and the sound sends an echoing ripple through every single one of Mary's nerves. Her nipples are hard as diamonds and she's wet, fuck, more on edge than she ever was during Dean's pregnancy, as if one touch, one _noise_ might be enough to push her into orgasm.

"Why," the demon says. "I am the one you called. I am de Sade's demon. Most who know me prefer to call me Dantalion, though." The demon makes a mocking little bow in Mary's direction and adds, "Please. No puns on my name, if you would be so kind."

Mary blinks. "You," she starts to say, then cuts herself off. A raised eyebrow from the demon and a gesture that Mary takes to be inviting, and she says, haltingly, "You aren't what I expected."

The demon laughs and Mary gasps as she comes, feeling a white-hot pain course through every muscle in her body. Strangely, that only makes the orgasm stretch out longer, turn it deeper, and when she catches her breath, she finds herself on her knees, the knife dropped in favour of clutching at the cement.

"My dear Mary Winchester," Dantalion says. "Thank you for the compliment. Now. We need to bargain."

Her head reeling, Mary tries to shake off the languor spreading through her body. "Bargain? There's no bargain. I invoke, you reply."

Dantalion crouches down, outside of Mary's protective circle, and looks at her with more fondness than she's strictly comfortable with. "It's how we do things, where I come from. Just as the lord god of heaven is bound by laws older than time, so, too, do we have rules to follow. Bargaining is our way of making those rules clear. Do you understand?" Mary nods, slowly, and settles back on her heels. "Then let us begin," the demon says. "What do you wish to learn?"

Mary opens her mouth to reply, one hand clutching her stomach, but then she stops, tilts her head to the side and thinks. Demons are smart and they lie. She's woefully underprepared and, now that she's here, with Dantalion, thinks she's a pea-brained idiot, as her father used to say.

Used to. Before he died. Before she made a deal with a yellow-eyed demon wearing his skin.

"I want to know what the demon was talking about," she says. "What it meant when it said it would be back. I know it's about my baby but I want to know _exactly_."

The demon hums and stands up, starts to pace. "Knowledge. Well, my dear. That could get expensive. Do you have conditions?"

Mary narrows her eyes. "Conditions?"

"I presume," Dantalion drawls, turning to face her, "that you'd prefer to get out of this alive and unharmed? Both you _and_ the child? Think and speak carefully, Mary Winchester. I like you, that will go a long way towards helping you, but I'm still a demon." His smile shows teeth and his eyes gleam black.

Oh, fuck.

\--

"A chance to search for answers in each of our nine circles, safe passage through hell, and you and your unborn child safe from harm," Dantalion says, hours later. "And in return."

"In return, I accept lessons from any demon I come across," Mary says. She's not convinced that's a good idea, far from it, in fact, but she chose three conditions so Dantalion has the same right. It's like he came with a list already in mind; he laid down his demands immediately, without thought, and has stuck to them rigidly, unwilling to yield even one iota. "I don't tell anyone or anything about this. And."

The demon smiles, lips stretched tight over its teeth. Mary wonders how he ever sent her tumbling to her knees, then grimaces as another round of warmth sweeps through her from head to heel, setting her nerves on a fire beat from pleasure and pain. It passes quickly, as they all have, ever since the first, but she hates it.

"And I allow demons to _lurk_ around my house," she spits out.

"Now, now," Dantalion says, chiding her. "I've already agreed that we'll watch and nothing more. We won't step on your little suburban lawn or show ourselves to any psychics or sensitives. We're simply there."

Mary cuts him off, says, "There to keep an eye on things, sure. Fine. We have a deal. Now go the fuck back to hell."

Dantalion grins and shakes his head. "A kiss to seal the bargain, my dear. It is tradition, after all."

Her immediate response is an emphatic no because she's not stupid enough to take down the protective circle. But the yellow-eyed demon kissed her and Dantalion can affect her even through the chalk and rosemary. Against her better judgment, all of her training as a hunter screaming against it, Mary swipes a line through the circle.

She kisses the demon with her eyes open and pulls back with a split lip.

"I shall see you the night of the new moon," Dantalion says, tongue darting out to lick over his lips, as if he's tasting her, judging her. His smile sends shivers down her spine. "I expect you have plans to make, to keep this little jaunt a secret from the rest of your family. Good luck, Mary Winchester."

And he's gone.

Mary lets out a deep breath. She's so stupid. She needs to know.

\--

On the night of the new moon, she mixes sleeping pills in with the mashed potatoes and valerian root and chamomile with her glazed carrots. Mary doesn't eat either but makes sure John and Dean have firsts and seconds, then lets John lick the serving spoons clean. She laughs, seeing it, and prays the sound isn't as hollow as she feels. Her acting skills must be good, enough; John smiles at her, leans in close to her and kisses her, soft and sweet, like nothing she deserves. 

She's kept so many secrets from him. 

Mary hums as she washes dishes and tidies up the kitchen. It's the tune of a lullaby her mother used to sing to her when she couldn't sleep, something old and Greek. Mary's never learned what it means in English but the tune alone is enough to calm her, helps her keep her hands steady. 

Dean goes down early, yawning so much he can barely make it up the steps. John's only behind him by an hour or so, can't focus on the game even though it's a good one. He kisses Mary on his way upstairs, tells her not to be up too late, and she can hear him start snoring a few minutes after he's fallen into bed. 

Mary puts on her boots and does up her hair in a tight French braid. She can't meet her own eyes in the hall mirror. With a murmured prayer and a backward glance, she leaves. 

\--

Mary's in the same abandoned house where she summoned Dantalion two weeks ago by the time the church bells chime at midnight. She's in the cellar, remnants of her ritual all around her, and shivering in the cold. 

"Hell will warm you up, my dear." Mary spins in place, sees Dantalion standing not three feet away from her. The demon nods at her wrist says, "But I'm afraid you'll have to leave that here."

Mary never takes this bracelet off. Her fingers tremble as she unclasps it, sets it down gently on the cement floor, and stands back up again. She meets Dantalion's eyes and asks, "How do we get there?"

Dantalion smiles, says, "Best take a deep breath," and rips open the veil between worlds. 

\--

Hand-in-hand, Dantalion leads the way through a cold so intense and deep that breath freezes in Mary's lungs. They pass through the black void quickly, almost as fast as one single blink, but then she's staggering, gasping for air. The pressure here, outside the gates of hell, is immense. She can feel it crushing her, pressing down on her, and then there are lips on hers and a hand placed against her sternum. 

The kiss sends air down into her lungs, gets them moving again, and the hand against her sternum traces out a rune that burns so brilliantly an afterimage is seared into Mary's sight. 

"That rune is a sign of our bargain," Dantalion explains before Mary can ask. "It will give you the ability to survive what you've so willingly contracted to do. Now, look upon the gates of hell before they open and allow us entrance. It's a sight that not many people are alive to see."

Mary gapes at Dantalion but then does as directed, can't help it. The gates are massive, cherry-red molten iron stretching up so far into the sky that she can't see where they end. Golden script is carved into the very metal, script that Mary recognises as Enochian but has no hope of reading. Dantalion gestures Mary forward and she takes one step closer to the gates. They pull on her, on the rune Mary's wearing, and then open slowly, so very slowly, to the sound of screams and the smell of burning flesh. 

She presses her hands over her belly and steps backwards before she even realises what she's done. 

"We made a deal, my dear," Dantalion reminds her. "Are you going to break our bargain before you've even stepped one foot into hell? You fought so hard for your ability to get answers, Mary, and now you're going to back away in cowardice before you can ask any of my brethren your questions?" 

Even if she could break the deal, Dantalion is right: she's not going to. Her parents raised her to be smarter than this, yes, but they did not raise her to be afraid. 

With a deep breath, one last, untainted breath of fresh air, Mary steels herself, then walks inside. 

The gates clang shut behind her. It seems as if all of hell echoes with the noise. 

\--

Dantalion at her side, Mary walks into the first circle. The dirt beneath her feet isn't dirt; something about it sounds different as she walks on it. She crouches down, picks some up and studies it in her hands, lets it run out through her fingers. 

"Hellfire," Dantalion says. "Hardened into solid flame, then ground into powder by restless souls, here, in the first circle. We don't have ground, not the way you understand it, but the floor of each circle is covered by hellfire or bone ash or blood." Dantalion pauses, then adds, softly, "Those are three things hell has in abundance."

Mary stands up, unsteady on her feet. This is just the first circle, she has only been in hell for minutes, and already she wants to vomit. Dantalion must read that on her face because he gives her a gentle look of encouragement. 

"Who do I ask?" Mary looks around, sees nothing except a wide expanse of powdered hellfire on the ground and reddened sky above. "Who rules here?"

"The governor of this circle is Malphas," Dantalion says. "Do you see the buildings in the distance?" He points and Mary follows the direction of his gesture with her eyes. Half a mile away, maybe, Mary can see a half-dozen or so round citadels if she squints. "That is where we will find him."

Mary nods, more to herself than the demon at her side, and says, "Let's start walking, then."

\--

Even through her boots, the hellfire under her feet feels like harsh gravel. When they leave the path and start to walk through the grass, its long stalks whip around her legs, sending cuts through her jeans into her skin. By the time they reach the citadel, blood is oozing from every inch of her below her knees. She hurts, desperately hurts, but compartmentalises the pain the way her father taught her. She's out of practice but manages well enough to stand at the foot of the citadel's wall and ask, "What now?"

"Now you knock," Dantalion says. Mary looks, sees seven different doors, turns to Dantalion and raises her eyebrow in silent question. "You pick. Human's choice." 

Mary keeps her eyes on the demon a moment longer, then glances at each of the seven doors. They're identical in size and shape but each door is painted a different colour. She could choose her favourite colour but doesn't want it to have any association with hell in the future, so she goes for the green door, so vibrant and out of place here, and knocks once, twice, three times. 

Nothing happens. Mary lifts her hand to knock again, but before she can, the door swings open and a demon leans against the doorframe, arms crossed across his chest, smiling at her. The demon's eyes are an incandescent blue that makes Mary think of a box her mother gave her, beautifully carved mahogany, inlaid with lapis lazuli. She can't help staring and it makes the demon laugh -- not out of spite, Mary thinks, as she comes back to herself. The demon's amused by her. That's almost worse.

"Welcome, Mary Winchester," he says. "I am Malphas and the first circle, the circle of weeping and regret and the gnashing of teeth, is mine."

Mary wants to ask how the demon knows her name, knows her face to call her by name, but instead the words that come out of her mouth are "Do you have the answers I seek?" 

Malphas smiles. For a second, Mary's heart leaps into her throat but when he replies, "I don't have the answers," she slumps. Of course it would never have been that easy. She moves as if to go on but Malphas straightens up, reaches out and puts a hand on her shoulder, stopping her from leaving his circle and going on to the next. "You promised to accept lessons freely offered," he says. "Let me teach you something of hell, my sweet, sweet darling."

Mary opens her mouth to ask a question, then stops herself. She bargained for answers to her questions, not the freedom to indulge her need for knowledge. 

"Ask, darling," Malphas says. "If there is one trait that spans both the demonic legion and the angelic plague, it's curiosity. No one here will judge you for your inquisitiveness. We'll respect it much more than anyone on earth ever has or ever will."

"Why are you offering me a lesson?" Mary asks. 

Malphas laughs and takes a step backwards, crooking his finger and beckoning Mary to follow him inside the citadel. He turns, then, and disappears into the darkness within the building. Mary follows, moving gingerly into the citadel made, she guesses, of bones and bone ash, pitch serving as grout. The darkness within the citadel is blinding and the torches of hellfire on the walls aren't enough to help her see much of anything. 

A hand touches her shoulder; Mary flinches but Dantalion murmurs in her ear a moment later, says, "It's just me, my dear. Calm. Let me guide you." 

Dantalion leaves one hand on her shoulder, the other pressing gently at the small of her back. Heat radiates out from his touch, her body remembering the effect he has on her even if her mind would rather forget. With movements almost too soft to notice, Dantalion leads her forward, then up a set of narrow stairs, until she emerges from an archway onto the roof of the citadel. Mary blinks in the sudden twilight. 

Malphas is there, waiting for them, and he looks pleased when he sees Dantalion touching Mary. Mary steps away from the demon, quickly, after she realises that Dantalion still has his hand on her even though she can see now. Drawn to the edge of the citadel, Mary looks out over the first circle and hears the two demons conversing behind her, loud enough to hear the rise and fall of voices, too quiet to hear actual words. 

Instead of trying to hear what they're saying, Mary studies the landscape in front of her. The first circle is immense, reaching far beyond the horizon. Still, there's an irregular line of _something_ what looks like a mile away, dropping below the ground. Mary can't help but think of Dante, thankful for the first time in her life that her mother was so passionate about the classics: the _Inferno_ and _Paradise Lost_ , Enkidu and Orpheus, Bacon and Bosch. 

"The second circle," Malphas says, coming over to stand on Mary's right as Dantalion takes his place at Mary's left side. "Adramalech's realm. That's where true punishment begins. The first is mostly benign, compared to the other circles." 

Benign is not the word Mary would have chosen, not with the ground so rough and the grass so quick to cut, but she has to admit that she would have expected more from hell, even in the first circle. 

"Weeping and regret and gnashing of teeth," she says, echoing Malphas' words from earlier. "But where are the souls?"

Malphas turns from his survey of the first circle to look at Mary. She meets the demon's eyes, can't help but be taken by the bright blue orbs again. It's only Dantalion's presence as he brushes against her that saves her from being hypnotised once more. 

"I am allowed a certain leeway," Malphas says, after he's stopped smiling at Mary. "The first circle is -- I hesitate to use the word tame, but I am the most merciful of my brethren and take very little pleasure in torment. It's the slow slide away from belief, you see, that's my weakness: doubt, in its many manifestations. And to demons, doubt is not a sin. That's why we're here in the first place." Mary's still trying to make sense of that when Malphas asks, "Are you sure you want to see the souls?" 

"Yes," Mary says, instantly. 

Malphas reaches over and places his hands across her eyes. "Let your eyes be opened," he whispers, right into Mary's ear, and then he steps back. 

Mary blinks, looks outward, and regrets her thoughtless answer just as instantly as she spoke a moment ago. There are -- the plains of the first circle are _filled_ with masses of souls and all of them are crying and bleeding their essence into the sky. That's what's giving off the light, not a mockery of the sun or a band of hellfire sewn together, but pieces of human _souls_.

"And you say this is mercy," Mary says, eyes caught on one soul close to the citadel, watching as it cries and mourns and then falls to the ground in sad depression. The grass and ground cut the soul and a small piece breaks off and starts floating upwards, joining hundreds of thousands of other pieces, all floating higher and higher.

"There are no screams," Malphas points out. "There are tears, darling, but no screams. It could be worse. You will see much, much worse on your journey." 

Demons lie, it's one lesson among so many that she's had drilled into her head, but she believes him. "Is that my lesson?" she asks. "That I shouldn't have done this?" 

Malphas looks at her, reaches out and gently takes her hand. "Darling. The one thing I would have you learn is that doubt is not evil. It's just not in heaven's interest."

\--

Malphas leads her downstairs, her hand in his. The demon's -- Mary's not sure what to call it, flesh? body? can demon's even _have_ skin and bone of their own? -- corporeality has no particular scent or feel but, if Mary was pressed, in a darkness as complete as that of the citadel, she might describe him as cool, bearing the vague texture of corvine feathers. It's a relief to reach the plain again and be able to let go of Malphas' hand, even though she's surrounded by souls on all sides and for as far as she can see. 

"I almost envy you," Malphas says, as Mary pulls away from him. "You're in for a treat. And you'll get to meet the others who rule. You'll know us by our eyes," he tells her, running one finger down the curve of her cheek and leaving bruises to blossom in its wake. "We all have the same eyes, you see. It's how we show ourselves."

"We?" Mary asks, can't help herself. 

Malphas smiles. "The others call us the Eumenides," he says. "The Kindly Ones. Tread wisely as you meet us and ask us your questions, my darling Mary. They call us the Kindly Ones out of fear, as if giving us such a name will also bestow mercy on our shoulders. It does not."

Mary shudders but nods. She'll take that warning to heart. 

"Go now," Malphas murmurs. "Adramalech is waiting for you and his moods are more mercurial than any other demon's." 

\-- 

As they travel across the first circle, toward the cutting difference in the distance that Mary had noticed before, Dantalion says, "You are welcome to break our contract, my dear. It will not get any easier."

"And what happens if I leave?" Mary asks. "What does that do to your side of the bargain?" 

"It will not change anything," Dantalion says. "We'll still stay around your house and keep an eye on you, Mary. You don't have a choice about that. But we will not answer your questions. The ones you so desperately want to ask and have answered will stay a mystery. If you want answers, you must continue." 

Mary doesn't say anything as they keep walking. When they finally reach the border to the second circle, she squares her shoulders and says, "Well, then. We'd better keep going." 

With a deep breath, Mary steps forward into the second circle. 

\--

As soon as Mary crosses the boundaries between circles, she's pushed sideways by a gust of wind powerful enough to take her breath away along with her footing. An electric arc of lightning cracks down a moment later, hitting the ground next to her and showering her with pieces of crystallised hellfire. Mary can't help the cry that bursts from her mouth as those shards and slivers scrape across her skin and dig deep in to tissue and muscle. 

She's not the only one making noise; she hears screaming though she can't place it, not with the wind battering her every which way and not with the lightning striking every few seconds. The screams carry on the wind, echo against the lightning, multiplying and growing louder until it seems as though there are souls all around her, screeching and wailing and crying in anguish. Mary wants to put her hands over her ears but knows that would do less than nothing to block out the noise. 

"Where is Adamalech?" Mary calls out to Dantalion. "And what happens if one those lightning bolts hits _me_?" 

"Pain," Dantalion replies, barely loud enough for Mary to hear. The noise in this circle is immense, a physical weight of its own, attacking her as much as the wind is. "But not death. My dear marquis lived before the advent of electricity but he likened it to having the skin opened up and all of the nerves lit on fire simultaneously. And Adramalech is up there, of course." 

Dantalion nods at the sky and Mary follows his gaze. Lightning blooms and her vision goes white but she thinks she sees a cloud spinning down with the lightning, attached to it or guiding it, she's not sure. Another crash of lightning, another shadow -- the same one -- and Mary narrows her eyes to squint up at the sky. The next arc of lightning hits two feet in front of her; Mary raises an arm to shield her face from the chunks of hellfire that get blown up and when she drops it again, there's a cloud hovering in front of her. 

"Adramalech," Dantalion says. "May I have the pleasure of introducing Mary Winchester, who is here in search of answers." 

The ball of shadow spins and twirls, picking up blown-apart hellfire and using it to form a body. Mary's not sure if the demon in front of her is male or female; Adramalech has angular cheekbones and thin lips, a flat chest and narrow hips, lapis-coloured eyes holding a crazed sense of wild humour. 

"Questions, questions, questions," Adramalech says, and even its amused voice lacks an obvious sign of gender. "If you want to know something of my circle, Mary Winchester, my precious lost little lamb, you should ask Lust. She doesn't mind questions." 

"She is to ask you," Dantalion says, firmly. "You _must_ cease your jumping for a few minutes, Adramalech. We are bound by contract." 

Adramalech rolls its eyes and whirls in place. Mary takes a step back, can't help it, just as she can't help jumping as lightning swats the ground not six inches from her feet. "Contract," Adramalech echoes, spinning in circles around Mary. "Fine, fine, fine. Can't argue with a contract." 

Mary gets dizzy, trying to keep her eyes on the demon; she ends up closing them, flinching when she hears lightning or feels the wind around her change direction because of Adramalech's nearness. "Do you have the answers I seek?" she yells, words carried away from her by this never-slowing tempest. 

"Questions and answers," Adramalech says into her right ear. "Answers and questions," it says into her left ear. "I don't have your answers, little lamb, little lamb, but I do have answers for other questions, and questions for other answers. Will you let me ask and answer, answer and ask?" 

"Will you stop moving and make some damned sense already?" Mary snaps in return. 

Adramalech laughs at that; the pirouetting slows and then stops. Adramalech looks at her, the amusement dropping from its face and it glowers and pouts and stomps its foot. "Sense," Adramalech snarls. "All you want is sense? Where is your sense of fun, little beauty?" Adramalech gets in her face, bares its teeth, but by the time the demon pulls back from Mary, it's smiling again, eyes crinkled in delight. "But you do want. Wanting is good, better, best of all. Wanting is desire and desire is lust, so wanting is lust."

Mary frowns, asks, "But isn't wanting greed?"

"Ah," Adramalech says, winking at Mary before dropping the good humour and looking serious for the first time since it dropped out of the sky and formed itself a body. "Lust for power, for knowledge, for revenge, for meaning. Even, my beautifully lost little lamb, the lust for answers."

"Lust is nothing but desire, in all of its many expressions," Dantalion says. 

Adramalech points at Dantalion with a flourish and laughs, says, "Yes! Exactly!" 

Mary despairs of ever getting answers from this demon. She understands what Malphas meant, now, when he said that Adramalech was mercurial. 

"Mary, Mary, quite contrary," Adramalech coos, seeing Mary's frustration and darting forward to kiss her temple before twirling backwards just as quickly. "Lust is a sin, says the great lord of hosts, and do you know why, why, why?" 

"Because it's wrong to covet," Mary replies, skin crawling where Adramalech's lips swept over her skin, shocking her with static electricity. "Because it devalues and objectifies."

Adramalech laughs, then drops to its knees and screams out at the sky. The wind howls along with the demon and the sky turns white as dozens of lightning strikes crash to the ground all at once. "No," Adramalech cries out, his voice echoed by thousands, millions, of other souls, all screaming the same thing. "No, no, no!" 

Mary takes a step back, can't help it, not faced with the absolute rage and anguish on Adramalech's face. The demon sees her fear and its expression changes in the blink of an eye, turning sly and sardonic as it crawls forward. Mary swallows, can't help it, when Adramalech stops in front of her, looks up at her. Its mouth, with those thin lips, presses against the zipper of her jeans, teeth scraping as its chin nudges her legs apart. 

"Because," Adramalech says, and he quotes, "'I am the Lord your God and I am a jealous God who will not tolerate your affection for any other gods.' Anything, little lamb, little beauty, that can take attention away from the great lord of hosts must be denied, derided, and destroyed. Anything and everything. No competition. No other love. No greater love." 

"And so love becomes lust and worthy of punishment," Dantalion says as Adramalech sniffs Mary's crotch and then leans back on its ankles before somersaulting away. 

Mary ignores Adramalech's cartwheels and acrobatics and turns to Dantalion. "Are you saying," she asks, over the sound of the wind, "that lust is a sin because God is _jealous_? But doesn't that mean that _He_ is sinful?" 

She almost can't believe it, not until Adramalech creeps up behind her and whispers in her ear, "Now you see." Mary shrieks; she hadn't been expecting that and the demon startled her. Adramalech laughs, again, and skips around to face her and Dantalion. "Time to go?" it asks, plaintive. 

"Wait," Mary says. She holds out a hand and Adramalech snaps at her fingers with his teeth before he grabs her hand and licks a line up her palm. The demon's tongue leaves welts on her skin. "If love and lust are sometimes the same, do demons love?" 

"We love," Adramalech tells her, sincerely and earnestly, "because he first loved us. It says that in your bible, little lamb. But what it doesn't say is that our love never stopped just because his did. It simply found someone more worthy." 

With that, Adramalech dissolves back into a cloud. When the next arc of lightning falls from the sky, the demon takes off after it. Mary can hear its laughter in the wind, twining around the sound of screams. 

"The souls?" she asks Dantalion, all emotion wrung out of her voice, numb after what Adramalech just told her. 

"All around us," Dantalion says gently. "The wind blows them apart quickly once they arrive, and the lightning travels through their atoms in the air." Mary feels so very ill. "Come, my dear. Let's move on to the third circle. The deeper we journey into hell, the closer we approach the answers that brought you here."


	2. Chapter 2

As soon as they step into the third circle, Mary has to cover her head with her arms. Hail is raining down from the sky relentlessly; the hailstones range in size from a pinprick of diamond-hard strength to as big around as her fist. They hurt and Mary think she hears her arm break. It snaps back into a place a split-second later, fast and harshly enough to have her waver on her feet, biting back a scream. A moment beyond that, when Dantalion is helping her to the ground, covering her body with his own to offer some sort of protection, Mary hears footsteps walking closer. 

She looks up, sees a demon staring down at her wearing a mournful expression and carrying an umbrella. Mary blinks at the umbrella, then sees that the handle is made of bone and the canopy looks to be made of stretched skin, dyed vermilion in what Mary assumes is blood. 

"Mary Winchester, I presume," the demon says, half a question. He looks a moment away from tears, blinking fast enough and often enough that his eyelashes streak black through his blue eyes. Mary nods and the demon says, "A runner demon sent word that you had arrived. I thought I would save you the trouble of walking through my circle in search of me; it can be so hard to see, sometimes." The demon bends, carefully, and offers Mary the umbrella. "My name is Räum."

Distaste runs through Mary at just the thought of touching that umbrella but the hail is never-ending and while Dantalion protects her as best he can, the umbrella would do more, letting them walk through this circle to the next. 'We do what we must,' her father used to tell her, so Mary gingerly takes the umbrella and stands up. Dantalion stays close to her, his warmth radiating through the chill that the hailstones have bloomed on Mary's skin. She's not sure how the hailstones, hard enough to break bone, don't break through the umbrella, but she's not about to waste time asking. 

"Do you have the answers I seek?" Mary asks. 

Räum looks honestly regretful as he replies, "I have so many answers, but not the ones you seek. I am sorry, Mary. Please allow me to teach you something of my circle instead."

Mary nods. She's beginning to see a pattern. 

"We can walk," Räum says, "while we talk. I'm sure you're anxious to move on, both out of my circle and toward your answers. It's a shame; no one stays for much longer than they have to. But I am used to it." 

Räum moves to one side and gestures, waiting for Mary to come to his side before he starts walking. Mary can't see more than thirty feet in front of her. It's not dark, here in the third circle, but between the hail and a persistent grey smog that hangs low and heavy in the air, it's difficult to pierce the distance. Dantalion follows behind them, a comforting presence of steady footsteps and familiar breathing. 

"The third circle, my circle," Räum says, "is home to earth's _demimonde_. A more miserable group of people you will never meet in hell, Mary. Once the sparkling toast of the town, the crème de la crème, and now they are here, alone and penniless, attacked at every moment by forces they could never hope to control, even with all of their hard-earned skill and connections."

"Gluttony," Mary realises. "That's your circle. _Why_?" 

Räum mentioned the _demimonde_ and Mary doesn't know much about old-style courtesans but she can't imagine that many of them would have reached the pinnacle of their craft if they were anything like Räum. Then again, Räum is the picture of misery and he did tell her that the souls he punishes are the most miserable in all of hell. She's not quite sure if that's true, not without having seen the other circles, but the mournful screams and wailing that echo through the air and bounce off the hail every so often certainly lend credence to Räum's words.

"I feel a particular sense of empathy, you see," Räum tells Mary. "Once, before heaven lost control of humanity and hid the Garden from humanity's open eyes, we had free run of the earth. We lived in a beautiful land, caught between sea and river, that smelt of milk and honey. It was just us and the Morning Star, taking joy and pleasure from ourselves and from each other, increasing our numbers daily, until angels came from the Garden and ruined our happiness. We came here, to the Morning Star's land, as a direct result of that invasion, Mary."

Mary can imagine it: demons in the desert, fleeing from the sight of angels. That's all it is, though, just imagination. "I don't think I've ever heard this story before," she tells Räum, glancing back at Dantalion, behind them, as well. 

Dantalion smiles at Mary; the expression is mirrored on Räum's lips, when she glances at the demon walking beside her, though Räum's smile is sad and Dantalion's holds a knife's edge of viciousness in its curves. 

"Heaven has done its best to remove the origin story of Lilith from common knowledge," Dantalion says. "It hasn't always worked, much to their chagrin, though some bloodlines remember it much better than others. You should look up _The Alphabet of Ben Sira_ when you get home if you're curious." 

Ben Sira sounds Hebrew and it does ring bells. There are times when Mary wishes she'd paid more attention to the lessons her father tried to teach her or had a better memory, was a better student, a better daughter. 

"Do you know why the great provider considers gluttony a sin?" Räum asks. 

Mary's wrist aches; her grip on the umbrella is so tight that she's lost feeling in her hand. "Because it's a misplaced desire," she says. "And it takes food away from others who need it just as much."

"Because heaven does not understand pleasure," Räum says, gently correcting her. "When Lilith left the Garden, she became one with her physicality in a way that angels never have. Even heaven's saviour was both man and god at the same time. Heaven has no idea how powerful the senses are. Heaven has never tasted the most delicate songbird or the most tart berries, heaven has never lain lazy in sheets warmed by the sun or swum in a crystal clear lake as cold as ice in the middle of high summer. They do not understand the body, Mary, and so they condemn it."

"You condemn it as well," Mary points out. "By punishing the souls who get sentenced to your circle." 

Räum touches Mary's shoulder gently, oh-so-gently, and says, "All of demonkind has been punished as well by being forced to flee the earth. The Morning Star fashioned us this place and we have made it ours but it is not our _home_. We long for our freedom. And until we receive our freedom, as long as we are locked up here, sentenced to be locked away, why should we spare others? Misery shared is misery halved, after all."

"William Blake," Dantalion says, "once wrote that 'every night and every morn / some to misery are born. Every morn and every night / some are born to sweet delight. Some are born to sweet delight / some are born to endless night.' Humans, demons, we're the same, my dear: we were the ones born to misery and endless night." 

Mary's head is spinning with the thought of it. Even worse, she can't argue with a single word that either of them have said. Maybe it's a trick of hell, perfected by demons throughout history, ever since they left this desert Räum keeps mentioning, to make things that seem so fantastical sound so reasonable. She doesn't think so, though. 

"Is that," Mary starts to say, has to shake her head and start again. "Is that what I'm supposed to learn? Demonic history and that you think demons and humans are the same?"

Räum shakes his head; he looks so disappointed that Mary has to bite back an apology. Her lips bleed where her teeth have mangled them. 

"Gluttons are punished with misery," Räum says. "Turned from wonderfully carefree creatures into sullen souls, self-involved to the point of isolation. That is cruelty, and a cruelty born from heaven's lack of understanding and wholesale condemnation. Demons empathise. We glory in the same freedom and pleasure that humanity does. We long for it. And until it is ours again, we wallow in the same desolate depression." 

"Humans don't all believe that," Mary argues. "We don't act like that. We don't -- we don't long for what you're talking about." 

Räum's tone is full of compassion as he says, "If you do not, you are blind to your own desires. And that is even worse." 

\--

No one says another word; they simply walk in silence until they reach a wide archway made of frozen hail. Räum coaxes the umbrella from Mary's hand and holds it over her head as he says, "I hope you will realise, Mary, that the things you fight may not be the best things to shatter yourself upon." 

Mary meets Räum's eyes, then looks past the demon, over Räum's shoulder to the fog and hail of the third circle. "Where were the souls?" she asks. 

"You were walking on their backs," Räum says. "There's no other way to cross the circle."

For a long second that stretches out and out and out, Mary stares at Räum. Then, without a word, she takes Dantalion's hand and crosses under the archway, entering the fourth circle. 

\--

Standing on the threshold of the fourth circle, all Mary can do is stare in wonder. The floor is covered with jewels of all different colours and shapes and sizes, each of them glittering under the light of hellfire in the sky. 

"It's gorgeous, is it not?" Dantalion asks. Mary looks at him and he smiles, says, "Hell might be torment, my dear, but sometimes torment can hold such exquisite beauty." 

That makes no sense; Mary's afraid to ask what the demon means, afraid of the explanation. 

He must see it in her eyes because his smile turns gentle and he gestures her forward. "Kimaris is in charge of this circle," Dantalion tells her. "We will seek her out together." 

Mary swallows but steps forward nevertheless. At the first step onto the shimmering carpet of jewels, she shrieks in pain and falls to one knee, a keening noise escaping her throat when she loses her balance and the palms of her hands slide over the jewels. The stones are sharp, so very sharp, enough to cut a hole in her jeans and a deep slice in her boot. She's bleeding everywhere and has lost feeling in her knee; when she lifts her hands ever-so-carefully from the ground, she sees tiny little diamonds and rubies embedded in her skin, blood seeping out from around the gems. 

"How," she pants, wincing as she tries to stand and nearly falls over again, the blood on the sole of her boot making the gemstones slick, crimson smears echoing the crystalline shine of hellfire. "How will I walk?" 

"If you desire answers," Dantalion says, "then you will find a way. 'Those who restrain desire do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.' How much do you want answers, my dear?"

Mary exhales roughly and sets her sight on a shining chair maybe two hundred yards away. She bargained for this, she reminds herself, and she'll be returned uninjured at the end of the night. She can do it to get her answers, to be sure about her child. 

Gritting her teeth, Mary takes one step forward. She flinches at the cuts to her feet, slips on the blood but catches her balance. 

"I am right behind you," Dantalion says.

Mary takes another step. Then another. Then another.

\--

As she gets closer, she can see that the chair is actually more like a small throne, made of gold and sparkling with inlaid gemstones. The demon sitting on the throne has blue eyes and a heavy-lidded smile; she must be Kimaris. 

"You _are_ a treasure," Kimaris states, once Mary finally makes it to the throne and drops exhausted to the ground, resting cautiously on a large emerald. Kimaris leans forward and props one elbow on her knee so that she can rest her chin in the palm of her hand. She looks down at Mary, asks, "How in the queen's name did you make it all the way here?"

"She is impressive, Kimaris," Dantalion says. He cups Mary's skull in the curve of his hand, thumb rubbing tenderly over her hair. "And her will is strong. But this is still early in our journey."

Kimaris' eyes flick to Dantalion then back to Mary, a split-second glance that Mary would have missed if she'd blinked, if she wasn't entirely focused on the demon in front of her. "True," Kimaris says. "Well."

"Do you have the answers I seek?" Mary asks, when it becomes clear that both demons have finished talking to each other and are waiting on her. 

"I am sorry, my treasure," Kimaris replies. "I don't have the answers. But if you allow it, I would teach you something of my circle. It would be such a waste of your sacrifice to walk all this way, otherwise."

Mary exhales, resists the urge to cry. She hadn't expected to be this tired and she hadn't expected that each of the demons, the leaders of hell, would want to waste time with her. These lessons might be the death of her if travelling the circles themselves isn't. Reluctantly, Mary nods and watches as Kimaris leans back in her throne, pleased. 

"What do you know of the fourth circle?" Kimaris asks. "Do you understand our beauty already? Our riches and offerings?" 

"The fourth circle is greed," Mary says. "There is no beauty in greed."

Kimaris laughs, asks, "Is there not?" She opens her arms wide, says, "What were your first thoughts when you looked upon this circle, Mary? Was your heart not filled with wonder?"

"It looked pretty," Mary admits, "until I walked. Greed is a double-edged sword, Kimaris. It destroys contentment and happiness. It leaves a person empty. It looks good on the surface but there's nothing underneath." 

"Greed is more than that," Kimaris says. "There are more reasons than one might expect. Vanity, malice, evolution; why, my treasure, one might argue that we have a hand in all the other circles."

Other circles -- Mary saw souls in the other circles. The souls in the first circle were innumerable and the second, the third, Mary doesn't want to think about the circles she just came through. "Where are the souls?" she asks. "How do you punish the sinners? Or are they all in other circles?"

Kimaris laughs. "Oh, Mary," the demon says. "Of course they aren't in other circles. Why, look around you! The souls are everywhere." 

Mary doesn't see anything around them except -- "Oh, _God_." Both of the demons flinch at the name of God; Mary doesn't do anything but absently note that reaction in the back of her mind. She's reaching out, picking up a small diamond in her left hand and an even smaller amethyst in her right hand. She thought they'd glittered because of the hellfire in the sky before but now that she's looking closer, now that Kimaris has explained, however cryptically, Mary sees. They glimmer and gleam because souls are trapped in these gems and the shimmer comes from the souls twisting and screaming in pain. 

"Genius, isn't it?" Kimaris asks. Mary looks up at the demon in horror, sees Kimaris slouched in her throne, one arm propped up on the armrest, looking out onto the circle with fondness. "New arrivals on the bottom, slowly turning into such lovely jewels from the pressure of the souls above. I don't have to listen to any of them, don't even have to look at them except to see the beauty they can bring." 

" _Beauty_ ," Mary echoes, hollow. 

Kimaris chuckles, deep in her throat, and adds, "And if I get bored of the view, I can just do this." She gestures outwards and the gemstones move as if they've just been hit by an earthquake or a tidal wave. Some of the larger gems go crashing over smaller ones, breaking apart into pieces, and the small ones shake and reorganise themselves. Mary thinks she hears cracking bones and whimpers come from beneath the massive pile; she doesn't want to ask if she was imagining it. 

"The sharp edges," Mary says, cold creeping up from her feet. It might be blood loss but it's probably horror; if she hasn't fainted by now, she doubts she'll be allowed to. "They hurt each other, don't they." 

"Thus saving me effort and work when I would much rather sit here and appreciate the sight. As I said," Kimaris reminds her, "genius." 

Dantalion helps Mary stand and reminds her, "Torment and exquisite beauty, my dear. They are all too often one and the same." 

"Hell is a realm of contradiction," Kimaris says. "But then, humans are full of contradiction themselves. It's only fitting, I think. Pain can be a beautiful thing and beauty can be so painful, sometimes. And here, in my circle, those who hoarded have become part of someone else's hoard, turned into a possession themselves, and those who squandered have given the last thing they possessed: their souls. There is nothing left but torment, but oh, my treasure, how _delicious_ the torment."

"Is that the lesson I'm supposed to learn?" Mary asks. She's angry, grips her hands into fists before she remembers that she's still holding gemstones. They cut her palms to ribbons, blood covering the stones and dripping down onto the carpet of jewels beneath her. Kimaris licks her lips, seeing it. "That hell is fucked up?"

Kimaris tears her eyes away from the growing pool of Mary's blood and focuses on her face, though, it looks, not without effort. "That we reflect humanity," Kimaris says, stern for the first time Mary's seen. "That we are not so different from you, down at the core." 

Mary narrows her eyes and throws the two jewels at Kimaris; they land on the demon's lap. Kimaris picks up the diamond and caresses the angles and edges of the stone before tossing it idly over her shoulder. The diamond hits the corner of an emerald and shatters. "Räum said the same thing, but you're _demons_." 

"We possess multitudes," Kimaris says. "As do you. Greed is the reason you are who you have become, Mary, more than any other sin save treachery. Greed for a normal life, greed for the man you love, greed for answers." 

"I thought that was lust," Mary argues. 

The stern expression falls away from Kimaris' face, turns soft and just as fond looking at Mary as she had been looking out over her domain. "Oh, my treasure. I told you, we have a hand in all other circles. Lust is desire but greed is needy and grasping. If you don't agree that greed, as a word, describes you and your life, then you are fooling yourself."

Mary swallows. She can't hold Kimaris' gaze, so she turns her head to Dantalion and asks, softly, "Can we go now?" 

"You've heard what I've had to say," Kimaris says. "Whether you take my lesson to heart or not is, of course, up to you. It was a pleasure meeting you, Mary. A wonderful torment." 

Before Mary's curiosity can get the best of her to ask what, exactly, was torturous about this meeting, she takes Dantalion's offered hand and leaves. 

\--

The fifth circle is as different from the fourth as it could possibly be, Mary thinks. Instead of jewels, the ground under her feet is boggy; her feet squelch in a mixture of bone ash and bile. Five rivers converge in the centre of this circle, going out in different directions, spiralling away and over and down. The rivers are filled with blood and burning pitch.

"Five rivers in the fifth circle," someone says behind her. Mary turns; Dantalion is on her right but there's an unfamiliar demon on her left. He's tall, angular, and his face reminds her a little of wolves; the look in his blue eyes makes her nervous. "It's clever, is it not? The Morning Star knew what He was doing when He fashioned this place for us."

"The Styx, the Acheron, the Lethe, the Cocytus, and the Phlegethon," Dantalion says. "So many things have been written about your rivers, Aamon." 

The other demon, Aamon, smiles. It's a bloodthirsty expression that does nothing to calm Mary down. "I can't claim credit for them," Aamon says modestly, "but as I suffer on their behalf when they don't behave as expected, I suppose I should accept the praise as well. Thank you, Dantalion." Dantalion inclines his head and Aamon looks at Mary, tilts his head and licks his lips. "Now, now, now. What have we here." 

"I have questions," Mary says, before Aamon can say anything else. "Do you have the answers I seek?"

"I don't have the answers," Aamon replies, half-bowing as he does, a formal movement that does nothing to calm Mary down, "but I would teach you something of this part of hell."

Aamon offers Mary his arm and, after a glance at Dantalion, she takes it, sliding her hand through the gap between his body and the crook of his elbow. He seems so old-fashioned as he pats her hand with his other, leading her from the edges of the circle and deeper into it. There is nothing of the wolf left in his face. Such a quick change makes Mary uncomfortable; she longs for the reliable sensuality of Dantalion and feels revulsion for herself, at herself, bloom in her heart. 

"Here in the fifth circle," Aamon says, "we treat in anger. The liars, the wrathful, the sullen. Watch your step, my pet," Aamon adds, and Mary looks down. There's a soul caught in the reeds; Mary was about to step on it, push it further under watery ground. She can't parse that, not at first, but when she does, she tears her arm from Aamon and plants her feet. 

"Teach me your lesson," she says, "but please don't make me go any further into your circle."

Aamon clucks his tongue and gestures at a darkness hovering at the edge of the horizon. Mary squints and can't make out what that darkness might be, might signal. 

"A wall," Aamon says. "And a pair of gates, separating the first five circles, where we deal mostly with passive, venial sin, to the last four circles, which punish active, mortal sin. I'm afraid, my pet, that if you wish to move on to the next circle, you must go deeper into the fifth circle and all it contains." 

Mary would cry if she had the energy. Again, Aamon offers her his arm; again, she takes it. He hums, a pleased noise, and leads her deeper on, deeper in. 

"I would tell you something about lies," Aamon says, as Mary's trying to decide whether it's better to keep her eyes focused on the gates in the distance or on her path. "There are big lies and small lies, lies of omission and lies of commission. Some are enough to set the world on fire and some are tiny little inconsequential, insignificant lies." He leans in close to her, breath hot on Mary's ear, burning her skin and singeing the bottom of her hair. "There are white lies and black lies and many shades of grey lies, oh yes. But," Aamon says, "lies are lies, Mary. Those who tell lies will end up in my domain," and his voice drops to a low croon, as he adds, "And everybody's a liar, my pet."

Mary swallows, distantly shocked that there's enough moisture in her body for that. She'd expected hell to be hot but it's burning, reeks of sulphur and smoke and rancid blood, and it's so very dry that her lips have cracked and bled already, the scabs now falling off and cracking her skin again. 

Aamon chuckles. "But apart from the liars, we also have the sullen here, those who possess anger but not the will to act on it. And then we have my personal favourites -- I have a soft spot for those with wrath in their hearts. Sometimes their screams are so pretty."

As if that unlocked a spell keeping the circle silent, Mary suddenly does hear shrieking and yelling. It's so loud and violent, so full of hate and rage and despair, that her knees nearly buckle. It feels as though her eardrums are bleeding. 

"I do suppose at times that it isn't quite fair," Aamon says. "I and those demons under me find joy in this circle and yet we are alone in that. Joy is not something that sinners are supposed to experience. Or, rather, we choose to believe that they had their joyful moments and times before death. Now, in hell, they reap what they were so eager to sow on earth. And yet, I do wonder if there is any joy to be had in anger. What do you think?"

Mary's mind is drawn, unwittingly, back to all the arguments she had with her parents, all the lies she told when she snuck out to see John, all the very vocal toe-to-toe stand-offs and the silent, sullen hours around the dinner table, in car rides, during training exercises and before hunts. "Not joy, exactly," she finally says. "But enjoyment, maybe. Pride. Satisfaction." 

"Satisfaction," Aamon echoes thoughtfully. "Yes, that much, I do understand. Well, my pet, it seems you have taught me something as well. I am so very glad you visited, Mary. Perhaps someday I might see you again?" 

Lies. Anger. Sullen resentment. "Maybe," Mary says. 

Aamon smiles at her, says, "It is so rare that I learn new things. For what you've given to me, you would have a place of honour here in the fifth circle. Remember that, would you? And remember us." 

"I will," Mary promises. For once, she's telling the complete truth. 

\--

She and Dantalion leave Aamon strolling among the bogs, pushing down some souls with his toes, no rhyme or reason to the pattern. Mary cautiously picks her way towards the gates, unwilling to add to any suffering if she can help it, and, before too long, she's crossed the expanse of the fifth circle. She almost feels relieved as they're stopped by a guard demon, uses the time to collect herself, centre herself. She's over halfway through but knows, instinctively, that the worst is yet to come, the gates one giant symbol of the change in circles that she's about to experience.

"I cannot let you pass," the guard demon says, glancing between Mary and Dantalion. "Only the dead can pass through."

"The dead or those under contract," Dantalion says mildly, though the guard demon flinches. 

Dantalion takes out a contract, hands it to the guard demon, who reads it carefully, eyes widening and brows raised. Not for the first time, Mary wonders how demons can be so human, sometimes. Not for the first time, she wonders what that perception says about her. She thinks of Räum and Kimaris, what they told her, and can't help shuddering.

"Is this true, Mary Winchester?" the guard demon asks. "You are here under a bargain to seek answers? You signed this contract with Dantalion of your own free and willing consent?"

"I did," Mary says. 

The guard demon looks between them again, human and demon, and then hands the contract back to Dantalion. "Good luck," he tells Mary, as he steps to one side. "You're going to need it." With a gesture, the gates open. 

Mary walks through them. 

\--

The heat that blasts at Mary is almost enough to send her back a few steps. Her face feels scalded, skin burnt deep and cracking. The heat is unrelenting and keeps beating at her. She turns her head slightly to one side and feels as if her ear might get completely seared off. 

"You should probably walk fast," Dantalion suggests. 

Mary's hair catches fire and burns away in the time it takes her to glare at him. "Who rules this circle?" she asks. "And where are they?"

Dantalion points at a deck set high in the middle of the circle, one that reminds Mary of a park ranger's look-out. If she squints through the haze of ashes that her eyelashes and eyebrows have become, Mary can see one demon leaning on a railing, looking over the circle, with a few others around it, jostling for its attention. 

"Her name is Oriax," Dantalion says, "and again, you should probably walk fast." Mary glances at him; he looks worried. She's not sure why, not until he says, "There's a reason for the gates, Mary. This part of hell, this circle and the deeper ones, are worse than the ones we've already walked through. Much worse. The less time you spend here, the better."

The first and second layers of her skin has been melted by the heat. Mary lets her eyes rest on Dantalion a moment longer, then fixes them on Oriax. She starts walking. 

\--

"What is this, Dantalion?" Oriax calls out, once they're at the base of the platform. Mary is a mess of skin damage and she's having trouble breathing. Her lungs, with their miniscule alveoli and delicate bronchial passageways, are filled with smoke and when she coughs, she spits up blood and clumps of tissue. "Have you brought someone new to visit me?"

Oriax jumps from the platform; before Mary can even think to scream, the demon lands lightly on her feet and prowls, cat-like, around Mary. 

"Mary Winchester," Dantalion says. "Once Mary Campbell. She's here as part of a bargain, seeking answers about her unborn child."

"Not much to look at, is she?" Oriax asks, though Mary scowls at the rhetorical question. "The last one you brought was much more fun. Ah, well. Hell is an ever-changing place and so are its visitors, I suppose."

Mary coughs again and feels something in her chest rip. She gags for air but merely ends up inhaling heat like fire. 

"Oriax of the Eumenides," Dantalion says. "Please. The bargain was sealed and has been approved by the queen."

Oriax, her luminous blue eyes turned on Mary, says, grumpily, " _Fine_." She pulls Mary up by her arms, letting her fingers slide uncaringly through the tangled slop that Mary's skin has become. Mary gasps in pain and isn't prepared for the kiss Oriax plants on her, the way Oriax tastes of honey-sweet corruption and brimstone. Oriax breathes into Mary's mouth and the air curls through every inch of Mary's body, chasing away the burn and lingering in her belly, sweeping tenderly across Mary's unborn child, before it dissipates completely. 

When Oriax pulls back, lets Mary go, Mary's healed and the heat of the sixth circle no longer attacks her. Oriax is looking at her, watching her, and it makes Mary's heart skip a beat. 

"Do you have the answers I seek?" Mary asks, words tumbling over themselves. 

Oriax clucks her tongue. "Not even a thank you," she says. Her smile is vicious, feral and catlike, and she slinks around Mary again, trailing one finger over Mary's shoulders. "But what can one expect from humans these days."

Mary's skin crawls but she doesn't tremble, doesn't fidget. "Do you have the answers I seek?" she asks again. Her voice has gained strength but Mary doesn't know where from, doesn't care as Oriax meets her eyes. 

The demon tilts her head, one corner of her mouth flicked up in the parody of a smile, and she says, "I don't have the answers, but it would be my _pleasure_ to teach you something of my circle, Mary Winchester, once Mary Campbell. Will you accept my lesson?"

"I don't have a choice," Mary replies. 

Oriax laughs; Dantalion, behind Mary, has gone still. "Oh, little one. You always have a choice. Free will is the one thing that hell has _always_ held inviolate. Now, if you so _choose_ , come with me. I will show you the far and distant reaches of the sixth circle and then send you merrily on your way." 

\--

Oriax takes off for the platform steps without looking backwards. Mary feels suddenly bereft and wishes she was still experiencing morning sickness so she'd have an excuse to vomit. She glances at Dantalion who raises an eyebrow in question. 

"I did agree," Mary admits, the words reeled out of her without her consent. 

She follows Oriax to the steps and then up them. It takes forever to climb, what feels like forever, but soon she's reached the top. Oriax offers her hand at the trap-door but Mary ignores it, scrambles up under her own power. Oriax smirks, clearly amused, but lets the snub pass unremarked. 

"Ori," one of the demons purrs, hips swinging as it approaches Oriax. "What fresh meat have you brought for us?"

"Nothing for you," Oriax says, laughing when the demon's lips curve downwards. "The little one here is mine and mine alone for as long as she stays in this circle."

The other demons start to approach; Mary takes a step backwards and bumps into Dantalion, de Sade's demon closing his arms around her chest and holding her in place. His fingers pinch her nipple and she can't help whimpering as a flash of electric sensation skitters down her spine and curls around her clit.

"Please, Oriax," a different demon says. 

Yet another drops to its knees, says, "We're so _bored_."

Oriax scowls, hisses out, "She is _mine_." Oriax waves a hand and the other demons on the platform disappear in a haze of heat so intense that it warps the platform beneath their feet. Mary feels an echo of the heat against her cheek; she turns her head, eyes watering, and buries her face in Dantalion's neck. 

"Look around you, little one," Oriax says. 

Cautiously, slowly, Mary looks up; she sees Oriax watching her, can make out flakes of ash drifting idly in the air, but the three of them are alone. She takes one hesitant step away from Dantalion and then follows directions. The platform is high enough and this circle is flat enough that Mary can see in every direction, from the gates leading out to the fifth circle to the steaming river that marks the boundaries of the seventh circle. 

"Do you know what my circle is?" Oriax asks. 

Mary flinches; she hadn't heard Oriax move but the demon is at her elbow, looking out over the sixth circle. "Dante said heresy," she says. 

Oriax hums, leans her arms on the railing, eyes dancing from fire to fire, in the distance, when Mary glances at her. "A word that means choice," Oriax says. "You see, when the creator made angels, he made them to be servants, without free will, with no option but to obey. And he got bored of that. He wanted willing adoration. So he made humanity and gave it the power to choose its own destiny."

"But some choices are wrong," Mary murmurs. "And those who decide wrong, they end up here."

"Not so much a choice," Oriax says, "as an action. Heresy requires action, little one. And who decides what is right and wrong, hmm? Heaven? No. Not always. Sometimes it's a culture, sometimes an institution. Heretics are those who go against established customs, against the strongly-held beliefs of a civilisation. They forge their own paths. And if there is one thing that hell respects, it is those who choose their own way, who speak the words they want, who desire so strongly that they cannot but act on it."

Mary tears her eyes from the distance, from the fires that spark in and out of her vision. She looks at Oriax and asks, "But why do you punish them, then? If you respect them so much."

"We have our own laws," Oriax says, shrugging one shoulder. "And our own customs. But the punishment here is not so awful, is it? It's nothing like the third, with its hail, or the fifth, which made you balk, and hardly touches the pain of the eighth. So it's hot. So the souls burst into flame every so often. It could be much worse."

 _Hot_ , Oriax says. Like that heat wasn't enough to melt Mary down to her bones, walking here. Like being burned alive, by this never-ending heat or by fire, isn't a punishment worthy of hell. 

"Ah, little one," Oriax coos, pushing a loose strand of Mary's hair behind her ears. "You have such a gentle heart for such a fierce soul. The Morning Star, our king and queen, the Magnificent Seven and the Four Horsemen, all of our fallen and all of our birthed-demons: we have made this place ours by forging our own laws and rules and customs. But we have not yet won the right to our perfect freedom from heaven. Hell changes, Mary. And someday, we shall have a ruler who will be greater than even our Morning Star. Someday we will have our own saviour and he will free us from the creator's chains before fashioning a hell of his own making. When that day comes, we shall all, even our beloved Morning Star, choose to follow him." 

"Heresy," Mary whispers. Her mind is caught in Oriax's vision. She's terrified at the thought of it. 

Oriax laughs, delighted, blue eyes burning with fervent hope, and says, "Now you understand." 

\--

Mary's not sure how long she stands there, looking out over the sixth circle without seeing it. She's imagining a hell free from the rule of heaven, from God and the angels, and it's enough to push tears from her very soul, if only it wasn't hot enough to dry them from her eyes before they'd even have the chance to fall. 

Dantalion finally wakes her from her vision with a gentle touch to her shoulder. She jumps; the demon chuckles. "Come," Dantalion says. "We should let Oriax get back to her duties and we should move on to the next circle." 

"Nicor's a bit of a bitch," Oriax says, "but the sooner you get through Nicor, the sooner you get to Eurynome. You'll enjoy Eurynome, I think." 

"Thank you for the lesson," Dantalion says. He leads Mary to the steps and she's all too ready to climb back down. She does look at Oriax, though, one last time, and the demon mouths four words to her, four words that echo in Mary's mind and take root somewhere deep in her heart. 

_Free will, little one._

\--

For all that the boundary of the seventh looked hundreds of yards away, Mary and Dantalion cross the distance in mere minutes. Mary's not sure how that's possible but this is hell and she's ready to go home; asking more questions might mean she has to stay longer, surrounded by demons and damned souls.

When they get to the river that serves as the boundary between the sixth and seventh circles, Mary closes her eyes and wants to cry. The river, boiling blood, is filled with souls who drown, over and over again, souls who sink beneath the rushing tide of the river and then come up for air only long enough to sputter and take in big, gasping breaths before being dragged back underneath the surface. 

"The Phlegethon," Dantalion says. "And the only way to cross it," he adds, gesturing at a bridge not that far away from them. 

The bridge looks warped, even from here, twisted and sharp and barely capable of holding a soul's weight, much less a living human's. "What is it made from?" Mary asks in a whisper. 

"In the seventh," Dantalion says, "suicides are bound to trees with sharp thorns. Some of the oldest, in time, become trees themselves and are used to punish the newly-arrived. The bridge is made from such trees. Walking across it will not be pleasant." 

"Nothing about this place is pleasant," Mary tells him, her tone vicious. 

Dantalion laughs, runs his hand over her hair. When she jerks away, the smile drops from his face but his eyes gleam. He reaches out, grabs a fistful of her hair, and yanks, hard. Mary stumbles close to him, dropping to her knees with a pained shriek; beneath the pain, she feels arousal flutter in her chest and at the juncture of her thighs. "You may not think so," Dantalion says, bending down to snarl in her face. "But have some respect, Mary Winchester. You demanded entrance into _our_ realm, our _home_. You're a guest. Don't be rude." 

"Such passion, Dantalion," a voice drawls. Dantalion lets Mary go and she tumbles backwards on her ass, scrabbling for distance. "And she didn't even have the presence of mind to thank you for the reminder. Tsk, tsk, tsk."

Mary curls in on herself, pulling her knees to her chest and holding on as tight as she can, protecting herself and her child at the same time. She was stupid to come here, stupid to make the deal with Dantalion, stupid to make the deal with the yellow-eyed demon in the first place. Still, even as she's castigating herself, she's curious, looking over her knees to study the newest demon. 

This demon doesn't have blue eyes. Instead, the eyes are deep caverns of ebony and perfectly suit the body that the demon wears, with its careless smile and its casual stance, checking fingernails rather than looking at either Dantalion or Mary. 

"Sycorax," Dantalion says. "You do us great honour." 

"I have the queen's leave to come back and visit my old stomping grounds every so often," the demon, Sycorax, replies. "It keeps me on my toes. And I just couldn't help my curiosity when I heard about our special guest. Mary Campbell, in the flesh." 

Dantalion looks apologetic even as he says, "Winchester, now, Sycorax." 

Sycorax studies Dantalion then his eyes slide to Mary. She feels flayed open by his gaze, like it's searching out something inside of her. She's not sure whether he finds it or not, but he does end up smiling. "Winchester," he murmurs, like he's rolling the name over in his mouth. "Winchester. Hmm. Yes, I see. Well. Don't let me keep you. Enjoy the rest of your stay, Mary Winchester. It's been a pleasure meeting you." 

Mary feels raw and hugs her knees even tighter as she whispers, "Thank you." If hell doesn't kill her, it might just drive her mad instead. She only bargained to be unharmed; she has no idea if that means mentally as well as physically. 

"You'll survive, my dear," Dantalion says, crouching next to her as Sycorax wanders off towards the platform where they left Oriax. He rubs her shoulder, then lets his hand trace from her knee down to her ankle, then back up to her knee again. "You'll return to your home and your husband and your son with hard-won knowledge and maybe a little sympathy for us down here in our prison, but you'll be untouched." His hand circles her knee, then slides down her thigh, this time, instead of her shin. 

She's not sure how to feel, not sure _what_ to feel. She wants to duck her head and cry into her knees at the same time she wants to let her legs fall apart, feel Dantalion's touch on her again. She wants what little happiness she can find in this place, in hell, and wonders in a small corner of her mind if that's insanity or self-preservation. 

Dantalion takes the choice away from her, taking her hand and pulling her up with him as he stands. Mary almost mourns the missed opportunity and then wants to kill herself for feeling such a sense of loss. As if he knows what she feels, how she feels, Dantalion kisses her, slow and gentle and tasting of sulphur. Mary clings to the demon, leans into the kiss, and pants when he pulls away. 

"The seventh awaits," Dantalion murmurs. "We should go." 

"Yes," Mary says, mindless, eyes caught on Dantalion's lips. "We should."

Dantalion tilts his head and his lips, the ones Mary is so fixated on, curve upwards into a smile. "Is there something else you'd rather be doing, my dear?" His tongue darts out, licks the line of his lower lip. 

Mary's tits are aching and her clit's throbbing. She's wet, so fucking wet, and everything in her _wants_. She can't stop staring at Dantalion's mouth, wonders what it would feel like to have those lips suck her, feel his wicked tongue lick her and plunge into her, feel his teeth graze every inch of her. 

She lifts one leg, intent on going to Dantalion, on pulling him down to the ground, on forcing his head between her legs, but a soul in Phlegethon, not ten feet away, comes up for air and screams for help, for forgiveness, for redemption, before being pulled back under. Mary recoils from her thoughts, feels shame and white-hot hatred shoot upwards from the ground as her foot lands. 

"We should go," she says. 

Dantalion grins at her, teeth gleaming. Mary meets the demon's eyes and then looks away.


	3. Chapter 3

Crossing the bridge is one of the most difficult things Mary has ever done. The bridge itself is formed of gnarled trees twisted together, thorns sticking out every which way, and the Phlegethon below is boiling so hot that the steam coming off of it scalds Mary when it finds its way through empty spaces. Mary makes it, though, and as she takes her first step onto the grounds of the seventh circle, dogs start howling in the distance. No, Mary realises, not dogs. Hellhounds. 

"The seventh is the circle of violence," Dantalion says. "And suicides. When a person sells their soul in a bargain with a crossroads demon, is that not a form of suicide? And when the hounds come and rip the soul out of its shell to drag it here, is that not the ultimate act of violence?" 

A whipline of flaming sand rises up from the ground and it spins so fast and so dense that Mary has to cover her face. When the wind dies down, a blue-eyed demon is standing there, brushing stray fragments of ground hellfire glass from her shoulders. 

"You shouldn't go telling things that aren't yours to share, Dantalion," the demon growls, sounding so much like one of those hellhounds herself. "If anyone's going to teach this little human bitch about my circle, it's going to be me. Understand?" 

"My apologies, Nicor," Dantalion says. 

He gives in so quickly and so respectfully that Mary looks at him askance. Someone who Dantalion treats like that, she thinks, is not someone she wants to be around for very long. "Do you have the answers I seek?" Mary asks. 

As those blue eyes fix on her, Mary hopes that Nicor will say no and let her move on, but the demon scowls and says, "I don't have the answers. But I do have something I want you to learn. If you pay attention, this won't take long." Mary nods, quickly, not wanting to be here any longer than absolutely necessary. Nicor's lip curls and she turns away from them, says, "Come," and disintegrates back into sand. 

Before Mary can ask how they're supposed to track sand when this entire circle is a desert bordered by a river of blood, part of the sand catches fire. The fire moves in a direct line, slow enough for Mary to keep up with if she jogs, heading toward the centre of the seventh circle. With one hand pressed to her belly, Mary starts running. Dantalion follows her. 

\--

Mary trails the line of fire through groves of gnarled trees, souls flayed open and pinioned by thorns. They wail in pain, all of them; wail and scream and howl and cry. Mary tries not to look, tries to focus on the path Nicor is laying out for her, but she can't help it. At one point, she meets the eyes of a suicide and the soul begs Mary to take it away. Mary stumbles and fire flares up at the base of the tree, breaking Mary's gaze with smoke and the somehow-tangible weight of screaming. 

She keeps running, following Nicor, and soon enough they reach the edges of a small plaza, flaming sand giving way to what looks like crystallised blood. Nicor re-forms out of the sand at the boundaries of this space, this time in a male body with broad shoulders and a narrow waist. 

"Violence," Nicor says, as he steps onto the glassy blood, stalking towards a chair set in the middle of the space. The chair seems to be formed out of the same material as the bridge: marred and twisted trees, woven together, with large thorns serving as chair-legs and arm-rests. Nicor drops into the chair gracefully, waves a hand, and hellhounds form out of the sand, loping over to rest at Nicor's sides and feet, tongues lolling out as they pant. 

Mary swallows, can't help it, as one of the hounds looks at her and starts to whine. 

" _Sit_ ," Nicor growls. The hound does so immediately, rolling onto its back and showing Nicor its belly. Nicor puts one foot on the hound's throat and then, without hesitation, presses down. Mary flinches at the sound of a snap, then chokes back acid when the other hounds lick their lips and focus on the carcass. "Feed, then, if you'd like," Nicor says, dismissively. 

Mary needs to look away, can't watch as those hounds dig hungrily into the body of a hellhound who had just been alive moments before, can't watch as blood and meat and viscera get gobbled down and drooled over. 

Nicor's up, moving around the hounds, and he's not at all gentle as he takes Mary by the chin and forces her face in the direction of the frenzied feeding. "Watch," he orders, harsh and cruel. "For there is a lesson in this." 

Mary watches and, when there's nothing left of the dead hellhound save her memories of it, when Nicor has released her, she turns her head to the side and vomits. 

"Disgusting," Nicor drawls, "but, then again, I expect nothing less from a mere _human_. How long will it take you to gather yourself? I'd like to get this over with." 

"Not as much as I would," Mary mutters, wiping her mouth off on her sleeve. She'd do nearly anything for a glass of water and a toothbrush right about now. "Fine, then. Go on. What lesson do you have for me?"

Nicor's lip curls but something flashes in his eyes, something that's less like disgust and more like blossoming approval for Mary's attitude. "Violence," he says. "The seventh circle's _métier_. And because we are the seventh, there are seven types of violence. Are you listening?" 

This time it's Mary who bares her teeth, who puts her hands on her hips, and spits out, "Yes."

"Good," Nicor says. He leaves her side and settles back into his chair, ignoring the hounds at his feet to say, "Pay attention; I'm not going to go over this twice. The seven types of violence: against self, against others, against property, against nature, against human arts, against that which sustains life, and against he who dwells in heaven. The suicides, the murderers, the usurers and sodomites and profligates and blasphemers, they all come here in the end, along with countless others. Tell me, Mary: how many of those sins are you guilty of?" 

Mary feels as though someone's just punched her in the gut. No other demon has put it so bluntly -- Aamon hinted at it but let Mary draw her own conclusions, trace out the logical conclusion to his words on her own. Mary has sinned. She has committed so many sins that even the pride it took to come here, to hell, is just one more sin among the multitude.

"I suppose falsehoods are a different circle," Nicor adds, eyes flashing, "but my circle is open to you when you die, if you so desire. Until then, I have nothing else to say to you. Leave." 

"Thank you," Dantalion says. He takes Mary's arms and tugs her away, off of the crystalline blood and back onto the sand, hellhounds yipping as they leave. 

\--

Mary stumbles over sand and through rows of trees and finally, when she no longer feels Nicor's eyes on her, she pulls away from Dantalion and strides towards the eighth circle under her own power. 

She's so close to the end of this. She wants to go home.

\--

There's a sharp-edged cliff separating the seventh and eighth circles. Dantalion carefully picks his way down the rock face and Mary follows twice as slowly. It's a climb, one she'd appreciate having a safety harness for, and her boots aren't doing much to help. The surface of the cliff is sharp and slices her fingers and palms with every touch but the pain isn't bad, like that of a keen-edged knife when she's cutting dinner, quick slice and a faint echo of hurt long before the blood comes. 

Still, she's relieved when they make it to a ledge and Dantalion helps her down the last few feet. She turns, presses her back against the cliff, and looks out in spite of a slight attack of vertigo. The eighth circle was flat at one time, she thinks, but ten different areas have been carved out of the rock -- or into it, she's not sure. 

Ten different holes, big enough for thousands of souls, and demons patrol on the paths above and on hanging bridges made of the same twisted trees as as the bridge over the Phlegethon, shouting things, throwing things, into the caverns below. The walkways and bridges that the demons use are narrow and nothing prevents them from falling, save themselves and their own senses of balance. Even worse, snakes appear in swarms from place to place, right out of the ground, no discernible pattern to their appearance and disappearance.

"Impressive to look upon, isn't it?" 

The demon that called out to them approaches on one of those narrow walkways, sashaying with steady feet even as the ground crumbles around her and rocks bounce down into the pits, hitting the souls trapped below. She has the blue eyes of the Eumenides and her hair is purest white, curling in gentle waves as it falls down past her shoulders. Mary would think she's beautiful if such a word could ever apply to a demon. 

"Do you have the answers I seek?" Mary asks. 

"I am Eurynome of the Eumenides, we who govern the first eight circles of hell," the demon says, "and while I do not have your answers, there are things I would teach you about myself, about my _malebolge_ , and about hell itself. Will you accept the lesson I have for you?" 

Mary squares her shoulders and says, "Yes," because of a bargain she made in naïve haste. 

Eurynome smiles. "Good," the demon says. 

\--

"Ten _bolgie_ , as your Dante called them," Eurynome says, leading Mary and Dantalion across one of those narrow rises of rock. Mary hates that Dantalion is holding her hips, helping her keep her balance, but she needs it, the vertigo coming back and whistling through her every time she catches sight of those deep, deep pits. "Can you name them all?"

"Not all of them," Mary says. She takes a deep breath, eyeing the knot of snakes that's formed up out of the hellfire and pitch one bridge over from them, and says, "Flatterers, oracles, corrupt politicians, hypocrites. Thieves, I think."

Eurynome hums, tosses a smile at Mary over her shoulder. "Five out of ten, not bad." As Eurynome leads them to a large outcrop looming in the middle of the circle, overseeing everything, she finishes the list for Mary. "Panderers and seducers, simoniacs, fraudulent advisors, sowers of discord, and falsifiers -- something worse than a mere liar, though Aamon and I have had disagreements about that and about which souls each of us gets." Eurynome laughs, once, and says, "I usually let him win. Prerogative of the older sibling, I think." 

To be told, and so casually, that demons have familial relationships, it almost doesn't bear thought. Mary can't take it seriously, not at all, and she tries not to sound skeptical as she asks, "The Eumenides. Are you all. You're related?" 

"We are," Eurynome says, "and we're some of the oldest demons in hell or on earth. With age comes power and with power comes responsibility. Very few can gainsay the word of a Eumenide, hence we rule, arch-dukes and -duchesses of our own small principalities within one large kingdom." 

"And you're in charge of the eighth because you're the oldest?" Mary asks, stunned. "Does that mean Malphas is the youngest?" 

Eurynome laughs, long and hard enough that they're forced to pause on the walkway. "Oh, child, you _are_ fun." She shakes her head and Mary's eyes catch on the way the white curls of her hair bounce. Eurynome walks again and they come to the edge of the outcropping as she tells Mary, "Aamon is the eldest of us and Nicor the youngest. We have, hmm, soft spots, one could say. Weaknesses of our own. Those have caused us to choose our circles, not age." 

Choice. The more time Mary spends in hell, the more she is beginning to comprehend. 

Eurynome walks up a flight of six steps, carved into the rock, and sits, reclining indolently. She leans back, baring her throat and closing her eyes, and inhales deeply, exhales on the tail of a husky moan. Mary is captivated. Eurynome smiles as if she can see the expression on Mary's face and says, "The smell here in the middle is just _perfect_ , wouldn't you agree? Come, sit with me," she says, and pats the rock next to her. 

Mary hesitates but when Eurynome pats the stone again, Mary sighs and follows the demon's path up to the top of the outcrop. She sits on the edge, hunched over, and gazes out over the eighth circle. 

One of the pits is filled with boiling pitch and blood; Mary notices an opening in the cavern wall where the liquid's coming from and wonders if it's the end of one of Aamon's rivers. Another pit is filled with snakes, souls screaming as they're bitten over and over again, pumped full of pain and poison in a neverending cycle. Yet another pit has rows and rows of racks, and souls are stretched out on them, put through torture by demons wielding all manner of implements. The dissonance between the top of the cavern's opening and the endless lines of racks and souls and demons inside has Mary dizzy. 

"Be careful, now," Eurynome warns, and sits up, lets Mary slump against her shoulder. Mary tries to control her vertigo, her nausea, her double vision, but it's a harder fight than she's expecting. She ends up closing her eyes and resting her head on Eurynome's shoulder, focused on Eurynome's scent, something cold and reptilian, sleek and sensuous and deadly. 

"Sorry," Mary says, though now that she's this close to Eurynome, she doesn't feel sorry at all. There's something about this demon that just makes her want to surrender everything she is and _fall_.

Dantalion crouches next to Mary, clucks his tongue and pulls her off of Eurynome. "I can't say I would have thought you'd be this taken by the eighth," he says. Dantalion sits down in the middle of the rock pile and spreads his legs, sets Mary between them and pulls her tight against him. "The ninth would have been my guess. But I suppose we are quite close." 

"Close in distance and in sympathy both," Eurynome says. Mary forces her eyes to open and focus on Eurynome. She sees the demon smiling at her, a smile perfectly mirrored by the glacial gleam of fascination in her eyes, and jumps as Dantalion's fingers start to trail up the inside of her thigh. Eurynome leans back again, rests on one elbow, and asks, "Are you ready to continue your lesson?" 

"Yes," Mary says. The sooner the lesson starts, the sooner it will finish, the sooner she will be able to leave this circle, the sooner she can get through the ninth and get home to John and Dean. She's done her husband and the child she already has such a disservice by coming here. 

Dantalion's hands rest on Mary's hips, then slide under her shirt. He brushes nails over her skin and pinches her in turns, branding every spot he touches. She tries to ignore him, isn't sure how much she can when one of his hands moves upwards, feather-light touch on the curve of her breast. Between his touch and how foggy-headed she feels, it's a struggle just to meet Eurynome's eyes. 

Mary flushes when she sees the smile that Eurynome is bestowing upon her. 

"Don't be embarrassed, child," Eurynome tells her. "One of your writers once translated Dante and said that my circle begins with the sale of the sexual relationship and goes on from there, that every affirmation becomes perjury and every identity a lie. You understand this, I think." 

"I do," Mary says, when it's clear that Eurynome wasn't asking a rhetorical question but expects an answer. Eurynome raises an eyebrow, silently asking for more, and Mary sighs before she says, "I suppose you could say I sold my relationship with my husband for his life? And my entire childhood was a lie."

Eurynome nods, says, "Though it didn't end with your childhood, did it? You've been lying to your husband: about what happened to your parents, about how he's still living, about who are you, down deep inside."

"About so many things," Mary says, "but I already knew this. I had this, this _revelation_ in your brother Aamon's circle. I'm a liar, I know, and everything about me is a lie."

"I wonder," Eurynome says, "if you will lie to your firstborn and your future child in much the same way. How will you raise them, Mary? You once told your parents that you would never raise children in the same lifestyle that they raised you in, told them in passion and the heat of anger. Did you mean it?" 

Of course she meant it. Mary opens her mouth to tell Eurynome that of _course_ she meant it, but doubt floods her very soul. She doesn't want to, has never looked at Dean and thought about training him with weapons or in Latin, but the child growing inside of her?

She puts her hand over her stomach, presses hard like it might save her baby from its own future. There will be demons lurking around her house and watching her pregnancy progress, and then there's the yellow-eyed demon. He only bargained to look but Mary is learning here in hell that the edges of a bargain can be porous with undefined lines; so much about the bargain she made with the demon possessing her father was left unspoken.

Her child might need it. Her child might benefit from it. But could Mary really do that? Could she really put _her child_ through the same misery she went through? 

Yes. She'd hate every second of it, but if it was best, if it saved her son or her daughter, yes. 

"The love of a mother is something not to be underestimated," Eurynome says. Mary had been so lost in thought that the sound of the demon's voice makes her jump. Dantalion steadies her, uses the opportunity to let his nails scrape against her nipple. 

"Is that my lesson?" Mary asks, stifling the tremour that runs through her nerves at Dantalion's touch. 

Eurynome smiles, says, "Part of it. The greater part is there, in the ninth _bolgia_ of the ninth circle of hell." Mary can't remember which, specifically, the ninth pit is; Eurynome takes Mary's chin, the action so different from Nicor, so much softer and careful, as if Mary is something _precious_ , and turns her attention to the largest pit, the one that made her so dizzy before, stretched out to infinity with souls on racks and demons torturing them. "That's where you'll find your lesson, Mary." 

Mary has to blink and shake her head; the optical illusion hurts her eyes and her mind. While she's trying to focus, Eurynome wraps something around Mary's throat that settles her eyesight and stomach both. Mary reaches up, touches what feels like string. 

"A strand of her hair," Dantalion murmurs into Mary's ear. "To grant you a form of synthesis with this circle. To let you see what must be demonstrated." 

When she swallows, the hair is tight around Mary's throat. It doesn't break. 

"There, in the middle of the front row," Eurynome says, pointing. "One empty rack."

Mary fixes her gaze on that rack after taking in the racks on either side and the tray of instruments next to it. She can't see what, exactly, those instruments are from here but they gleam in the light and look sharp. 

"Hell has a plan, you see," Eurynome says. "We have always had a plan. We have contingencies as well. Our leaders, my brothers and sisters and I, all demon-kind, we are waiting for the vision Oriax spoke of. Someday, it will happen."

"And that rack is the centre of your plan?" Mary asks. 

Eurynome laughs and runs her hand down Mary's hair. "No, my sweet child. That is the centre of one of the possible eventualities. Hopefully we will never have to use it. But if we do, it's ready." 

Mary gets shivers. "How long has the rack been there?" she asks. 

"Since the beginning," Eurynome replies. "Since the Morning Star Himself carved out this place for us. Our patience, Mary, is as endless as heaven's. In this we are well-matched. But where heaven chooses to depend on luck and an absent father, on their rules and traditions and unwillingness to involve themselves in human affairs, we choose to evolve. Our plans are solid but open to refinement, and our rules and traditions are fluid. That rack, child, is a symbol of what we are prepared to do. But it is also a reminder that we wait as long as we must for the right moment to take action." 

"A reminder that you're waiting for a ruler greater than Lucifer," Mary says, "and the lengths you'll go to in order to get him." She can't take her eyes away from that empty rack; she wonders just which soul is supposed to be stretched across it, nailed into it, pulled apart on it. "To get a different kind of hell." 

Eurynome strokes her hair again, lets her palm rest on Mary's back, right between her shoulder-blades. "For a war to end all wars," Eurynome says. "For our vengeance against heaven. For our freedom. And yes, for a ruler greater than our Morning Star, who was prophesied before the birth of humanity and promised to us."

It takes Mary a couple tries to get the word out, but she finally manages. "Anti-Christ."

"You see?" Eurynome asks. "I knew you'd understand."

\--

Mary's not sure how long she sits there, pressed between two demons, staring at the rack. It's Dantalion who rouses her from her reverie, who breaks the strand of hair from around Mary's throat and lets it coast away on the air, down into the throat of a hissing snake that vanishes a moment later. 

"Meeting you has been a pleasure, Mary," Eurynome says, lounging back even as Dantalion's pulling Mary down the flight of steps. "I shall treasure the memory of your visit even after the future has arrived and filled my mind with new and better memories." 

Mary can't say the same so she nods, eyes downcast, as Dantalion leads her across a hanging bridge and toward a darkness so massive that Mary can already feel it. 

\--

Unlike the other circles, the ninth is open to her view while she's still in the eighth. As they approach its boundaries, Mary's eyes fix on the demon seated in the very centre of the very deepest part of hell. She's sitting on a throne made of thorn and bone, next to an empty throne, identical in every way. Mary was expecting ice and a bound Lucifer with wings the span of hell itself but this demon is slight, and dark, and looks all too human. Mary feels a sudden quiver of misgiving; she looks at Dantalion who bestows a smile on Mary that looks almost sad. 

"You have to go on alone," he says. When Mary asks why, he kisses her temple and says, "I may be de Sade's demon but I'm not that high-ranking, really. I'm not powerful enough to go into the ninth and survive, not without an invitation from either of the ones who sit on those thrones." 

Mary looks from Dantalion to the demon in the centre of the ninth circle and gets shivers. She nods, though, and squares her shoulders. Mary understands what Dantalion means as soon as she steps foot in the boundaries of the ninth; the demons here, lining the path to the throne and staring at her, are strong enough that Mary can feel a vibration in her teeth as she passes them. 

She expects taunting, jeers, but the demons watch every step she takes in silence. Some of them are focused on her belly; Mary puts one hand protectively over her unborn child, keeps her head held high and ignores the demons. Her eyes are focused on the one in the middle, the one standing up from her throne. 

As soon as the demon rises, every other demon in this circle drops to one knee, bowing their heads. It's so hot here and yet Mary gets chills.

"Welcome, Mary Winchester," the demon says, once Mary's crossed the distance between them and is waiting in front of her. "My name is Lilith. I hope it won't disappoint you _too_ much to learn that my consort, Azazel, is on earth at this moment and won't be here to greet you."

Mary stares, looks around and sees demons, sees the trickle of one of the rivers dripping in the corner, sees a pile of bones and skins and the beginning of what looks like a table creating itself out of hellfire. "I thought there would be a cage," she stammers. "Lucifer. Ice. Who are you to be here instead of him?"

Lilith smiles and the smile is heartless. "The Morning Star Himself placed me here, along with Azazel, Mary Winchester, as queen and king of hell in His absence. And as much as we let Dante pass through and see the first eight circles for himself, the ninth remained off-limits. After all, it wouldn't do to worry the humans, would it? Wouldn't do at all to let them know that the Morning Star has never been caged and is only waiting for His perfect timing."

Mary's not quite sure how to take that and it's clear that her hesitation amuses Lilith. "Do you have the answers I seek?" Mary asks, hurriedly. 

"If I don't," Lilith says, "none of mine will. Ask your questions and I will give you your answers. But," she adds, as Mary's opening her mouth, "be sure you want to know the answers. And be sure you ask the _right_ questions."

"Is my baby human?" Mary asks, blurting out the words so fast and close together that they almost run into one word. 

"Oh, your baby's human, sweetheart," Lilith says with a smile that makes Mary's blood freeze in her veins. "All too human."

Mary shakes her head, tries to step back but finds she can't. Adrenaline rushes through her, sending panic signals through every inch of her body. "A human can't," she starts to say, has to stop and shudder as Lilith circles her. "A human can't be the antichrist, though, right? It has to be a demon. Right?"

"You think a _human_ could bring about the end of the world?" Lilith laughs. "Sweetheart, the apocalypse will take nothing but the best of all demons." She leans closer, noses at Mary's ear and then licks the line of Mary's jaw. "Believe your bible, Mary Winchester. Re-read John's Revelation if you doubt me. The apocalypse will need its anti-Christ and that, my dear, will take a choice. A choice from both the mouth and heart of one who carries the blood of the king of demons."

Mary swallows, tries to ignore the way Lilith's making her feel, terrified and turned-on at the same time. "But it won't be my baby," she asks. "Because my baby's human."

Lilith's smile does nothing to reassure Mary, though her words go a long way to doing so. "Your baby is human, sweetheart. Does that make you feel better?"

"No," Mary says, and she catches her breath because the smile on Lilith's face just froze and the demon looks ready to kill. "What's the demon, the one with yellow-eyes, what's it want with my baby?"

"Oh, sweetheart," Lilith murmurs, circling around Mary and then stopping behind her. Mary tenses, then turns as still as stone when Lilith rests her chin on Mary's shoulder, as Lilith's arms circle Mary so that her hands are pressed on Mary's belly. "Sweetheart," she says again, her lips so much closer to Mary's ear, "he just wants to take a look."

Mary takes a deep breath, almost chokes on the reek of hellfire and brimstone, of sulphur and blood. "He said." She stops, tries to cast her mind back. That night is so blurry, faint in her memory from all the effort she's gone to in order to forget it.

Lilith hums, tilts her head and sucks Mary's earlobe into her mouth. One of her hands moves over Mary's shirt, cups a breast and starts rubbing a thumb over Mary's nipple. She bites Mary's ear, then releases it with a lick, breathing words out next to Mary's cheek. "So sensitive, already. My, my. What fun your husband shall have with you these next few months."

"He said he was going to come by and that as long as he's not interrupted, no one will get hurt," Mary gasps, all of it on one exhale, trying to ignore what Lilith is doing to her, how Lilith's touch is making her wet and driving her to distraction. "What can't we interrupt?"

The hand still pressed against her stomach moves lower, as if Lilith can tell which parts of Mary's body are aching for attention. Maybe she can, maybe she's the one causing this, is trying to force Mary into some kind of reaction. Even knowing that, even with the full knowledge that her parents would _kill_ her for going to these extremes, Mary moans and lets her head fall back when Lilith's fingers press against her jeans hard enough for her clit to throb.

"He wants to say hello, sweetheart," Lilith murmurs. "To see the product of his deal-making. He wanted to be sure no one would stop him. Even though your husband doesn't know what kind of family you came from, you still have the house protected, don't you? He was making sure those protections wouldn't stop him. And they won't, will they. Especially with the bargain you made for safe travel: demons, watching you, watching your house, watching your child." 

Lilith slips one hand down Mary's jeans, long-nailed fingertip circling around, getting damp with how wet Mary is, her panties soaked clean through. The other is up Mary's shirt, between skin and bra, pinching and pulling at Mary's nipple. She sucks Mary's neck then bites hard enough to draw blood. 

Mary can't breathe. Her body is on fire and she's collapsed against Lilith, letting Lilith hold her up, letting Lilith have free reign over her, touch her wherever, however Lilith wants. 

"You, my dear, came to ask your questions," Lilith whispers, the wet heat of her voice pulling a cry from Mary's lips just as her fingers, sliding inside, do a moment later. "And so you have. Now let me teach you something of my circle, of the very centre of hell itself." 

The torment lasts for what seems like forever, an eternity, a handful of eternities. Lilith's too rough and too gentle in turns, too fast and too slow, and Mary's reduced to begging, whimpering and moaning between ragged, wordless pleas. 

Lilith laughs and the sound pushes Mary to the brink of orgasm and then back again, like she's battering up against a wall. It hurts, the pain is a taut bowstring of delicious pleasure, and then Lilith says, "You came to visit hell, my curious little sweetheart. Now come for me." 

An orgasm rips through Mary so fast and brutal that she claws at her throat for air, choking and screaming at the same time. It doesn't end, just seems to keep going and going and going. She's going to die from this. She won't be able to recover. Her heart's going to give out with a demon's fingers up her cunt. 

Lilith takes her fingers out from under Mary's clothes and steps back; Mary's climax ends immediately and she collapses on the ground, shredding her skin on hellfire glass, shaking as she gasps for air. 

"Take her away, Dantalion," Lilith says. Mary looks up at her, sees nothing on Lilith's face; the words and tone they're spoken in are clinical and dismissive. "I tire of her presence." 

A scant moment later, Dantalion picks Mary up bridal-style, bows his head at Lilith, and begins the climb back to the entrance of hell. 

Mary waits until they leave the ninth circle before she asks, "What's her circle?" Her throat burns from screams she doesn't remember. "What's the ninth?" 

"Oh, my dear," Dantalion says, nuzzling Mary's hair. "You should know that. My dear girl, the ninth is treachery." 

Mary takes that in, then tucks her head into the crook of Dantalion's neck and begins to cry. 

\--

She's done crying by the time they leave the sixth, guard demon inclining his head at Mary in what she thinks is respect. Mary's not sure, though; she's not sure of anything. She's drained, letting Dantalion carry her, her cheek resting on his shoulder, her eyes looking past him and back, searching out Lilith and the ninth circle while simultaneously praying she never sees her or it again. 

Mary whimpers through the third and second circles, sniffles through the first, and her eyes are bloodshot, puffy, and dry when Dantalion gently, ever so gently, sets her on her feet at the threshold of hell. 

"I have kept my side of the bargain," Dantalion tells her. "Be sure you keep your own, my dear."

He leans forward, kisses her with one hand resting on her hip, the other pressed over her belly. Mary -- Mary is in hell, will come back here when she dies, because she _melts_ into him; the soft pressure of his lips and the slow slide of his tongue against hers combines with the pain she feels all over, the stench of blood in the air, and she comes with a sob, feeling the child inside of her move. 

\--

Mary shudders, then gasps. Her eyes fly open and she falls backwards onto her ass, cold from the cement seeping through her jeans in a matter of seconds. 

She's back. 

\--

On auto-pilot, mind caught up in hell and the lessons she's learned, Mary sneaks home and into the shower. It's so strange to shiver under cold water, to breathe without pain, to feel so alone again. She aches, everywhere, and can't decide if it's the pain of adrenaline wearing off or the orgasm that Lilith gave her, fingers buried deeper inside of her than anyone has ever reached before. 

Even as she's thinking that, though, the memories of her time in hell are starting to fade and gloss over, turning hazy and insubstantial in her mind. She went for answers, she knows, and got them. Everything will be all right. 

There's a tap on the door and then John's face appears around the edge, frowning as he wipes sleep out of his eyes and focuses on her body. Mary watches, can't not watch, and has never felt more full of love for a person. Her darling John. 

"You okay?" John asks, voice a harsh rasp as he whispers. 

"I'm pregnant," Mary answers. A moment later, she's crying and laughing, the tears caught up in the water from the shower, the laughter caught in John's mouth as he joins her in the shower without taking off his pyjamas, getting drenched, letting water out to soak the bathroom. 

John kisses her, hard and gentle at the same time, needy and reverent, and then he drops to his knees, right there in the tub, and presses his lips to her belly. "Hi there," he whispers, fingers splayed over the barely-there curve of her stomach. "I'm your daddy. I can't wait to meet you."

_  
_

_One Year Later_

Mary wakes up. She's not sure why, not at first, but then she hears a noise from the baby monitor. Her breasts ache; it's been a few hours since Sam's last feed and he might be hungry again. John's not in bed so Mary gets up, floor cold on her bare feet, and ghosts silently down the hallway to Sam's bedroom.

John's there, keeping an eye on Sam. Mary smiles, can't help it, heart bursting to fullness at the sight. She loves them both so much. 

The light in the hallway flickers and Mary's stomach drops. Old habits are hard to break and her first thought is of poltergeists or ghosts or demons but then she taps the fixture and it settles. She doesn't want to wake up Dean or worry John, so she doesn't call herself stupid or tell herself she's overreacting out loud, though she does think it. 

But then there's a light downstairs. And when Mary looks, she sees John. John's in the chair in front of the tv, fast asleep. John's not in Sam's room. 

_Sam._

Mary runs upstairs, heart racing, pulse hammering in her throat like the wings of a frightened butterfly. She careens to a stop in Sam's nursery and gasps when the shadow -- when the man turns around -- when the _demon_ turns around, the demon with yellow eyes. 

"It's you," she breathes. 

Mary takes two steps toward the demon but before she can attack or scream for help or react in any way, she's sliding, pushed backwards by a force she can't see until she hits the wall. Then she starts sliding _up_. Mary fights it as best she can, uses every ounce of willpower she possesses and then some, but nothing helps and nothing stops her from moving upwards and onto the ceiling. 

"Get away from my son," she tells the demon, even as she's fighting. "Get away from Sam." 

The demon smiles at her, says, "I'm not going to do that, Mary." 

Mary stares and feels white-hot fury _burn_ inside her. She's going to hell, all of the demons she met there reassured her of that, of how much she belongs in so many of their circles, and she thought she'd be able to just watch this yellow-eyed monster look at her son, but now that the time has come, now that they're _here_ , in this moment, she can't. She can't do it. 

She has free will. She has a choice. Mary hasn't recited an exorcism in years but she does now, starts without hesitating. 

She gets as far as the fourth line, then the demon clucks its tongue and thrusts a hand in her direction. "I was almost hoping you wouldn't do anything," it says. "But it's better this way."

A line of agony shoots across Mary's belly; she clutches at her stomach and is surprised at how unsurprised she is to feel blood. The metallic tang hits her nose a moment later. 

"Forged in hell, weren't you?" the demon says, turning its attention back to Sam. "Made strong and proud and willing to fight. Mary, Mary, Mary. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I _do_ like you."

She can only watch, pressed to the ceiling, as the demon leans down and does _something_ to her son, her precious little Samuel. Sam sneezes, fists waving in the air, as the demon murmurs something too softly for Mary to hear. 

"What did you do to him?" she begs. "Please, tell me what you did to him." 

The demon grins up at her and shows her his palm. Mary doesn't understand why, not until she sees the cut, not until she realises that the stain on Sam's lips is blood. 

"You said," she gasps, tears falling from her eyes straight onto the floor. "You said no one would be hurt."

The yellow-eyed demon steps back from the cradle and looks up at her. "My blood won't hurt your boy," he says. "It'll make him better. It'll make him more. It'll make him _mine_." 

In a flash, Mary understands. Lilith told her to ask the right questions but Mary never did. She only asked if her baby was human and, up until now, Sam was. He's not anymore, though; he's changed now, become something else, something different, with the blood that the yellow-eyed demon fed him. Her precious baby boy and all this time, the demons lied to her, played with her and toyed with her. She never had a chance. 

Sam never had a chance. 

"You said no one would be hurt," Mary whispers, eyes caught on the nightmare she's only just now realising she'll never wake up from. "I'm going to die, aren't I." 

"Yes, Mary," the demon says. "But you interrupted."

Mary screams.


End file.
